1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technique for indicating to a participant in a virtual world the position of an interactive station and qualifying the participant to interact with the interactive station. More particularly, the present invention relates to a technique for maintaining personal information with an avatar as it interacts within a virtual world.
2. Description of the Related Art
The Internet has existed for a number of years as a means for exchanging information. The first phase in the development of the Internet was the development of a TCP/IP infrastructure which permitted documents and data to be stored on a networked system of computers which permitted access of the documents by users of the Internet. This system was difficult to use, as access was restricted to serious or expert level computer users who could maintain internal cognitive maps of data space.
The next phase of the Internet development was the development of the World Wide Web, which is a hypermedia system which added another layer of abstraction to the existing Internet structure. This abstraction provided an addressing scheme in the form of a unique identifier or universal resource locator (URL). With this system, anyone could tell where to go and how to get there for any document or piece of data within the Web. This permitted use by novice computer users. However, the only form of navigation consisted of direct reference in the form of a URL such as "http:.backslash..backslash.www.ibm.com.backslash.". In combination with Internet search engines that have been developed for finding URLs for information on the Web, the World Wide Web now provides a retrieval mechanism which compliments the original storage mechanism of the Internet. Still, the system is not entirely user friendly as the user must rely on rigid addressing standards, search engines for finding URLs/addresses, and links within documents to navigate through the World Wide Web.
The recent explosion in popularity of the Internet can be attributed to a number of factors, the advent of the World Wide Web among them. Another factor has been the decreasing cost of computers and related technologies, and the increases in the speed of communication via high speed modems and the like. This has made possible the graphic-rich portion of the Internet, which is accessed via the World Wide Web. This graphic rich content has given the Internet the mass appeal that it previously lacked.
In the World Wide Web, documents or sites are typically written in the definition language known as Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). Until very recently, the World Wide Web comprised sites which include almost exclusively two dimensional graphics. This was due in part to limitations inherent in HTML. The Internet itself is a large number of computers networked together which contains a large number of sites. Each site has its own unique URL which identifies the computer (server) on the Internet on which the site resides. Typically, a user accesses a site on the Internet from a personal computer via a phone line to an Internet service provider which links the user to the Internet. The user needs Web browser software, such as Netscape Navigator from Netscape Communications Corporation or WebExplorer from International Business Machines Corporation, on his or her computer in order to view most World Wide Web content on the Internet. The Web browser software is able to display the HTML content of World Wide Web sites on the user's monitor.
While it was the advent of two dimensional graphically intense Web sites that spurred the popularity of the Internet, the next level of technology may bring Internets, internal networks such as intranets, and networks in general to a new level. This third phase of Internet development has been the introduction of intranetworks, which are essentially documents and their data (World Wide Web sites) which have been rendered sensually. That is, a user interacts or exists within a site or intranetwork and experiences and perceives the site from within. This new Internet technology involves three dimensional technology which permits simulation of real world objects. The three dimensional technology, also known as virtual reality, permits users to enter three dimensional worlds. Additionally, this three dimensional phase of the Internet permits virtual worlds in which actual people actually participate interactively with each other.
However, this technology is still embryonic. The technology is written in a definition language known as Virtual Reality Modelling Language (VRML). VRML is a language for describing multi-participant interactive simulations in virtual worlds networked via the global Internet and hyperlinked with the World Wide Web. To appropriately view or access a VRML document or site on the World Wide Web, a user is required to have an appropriate VRML viewer or browser in addition to (or in combination with) a Web browser.
As virtual worlds become a reality, virtual worlds will provide a number of advantages over two dimensional documents that will become apparent. Three dimensional worlds hold a promising future in the area of electronic commerce, as users of an electronic store or electronic mall can shop through the store and see and inspect the items that are available. It is also anticipated that virtual worlds will become prevalent in business and social environments as well. Today, virtual worlds lack a number of systems and characteristics that will make them more accepted to the general public. For example, virtual worlds at this time simply do not support many kinds of activities that are available either via standard personal computer systems or in real life interactions with the environments that virtual worlds attempt to mimic.
Three dimensional virtual worlds typically comprise large amounts of data. A virtual world will typically be a web site logically located at a server with participants accessing the virtual world via VRML enabled browsers or clients. The flow of data back and forth is limited by the communications link, such as a user's modem speed, and by network traffic, as well as the speed and ability of a user's computer to process data from the server. Accordingly, this can place a limitation on how virtual a virtual world can really be, and how well a virtual world can mimic the real life scenario it is attempting to exemplify. Depending on the architecture of the server, the virtual world is downloaded to the user's computer, from which the user navigates the virtual world via the local browser or client. The user's participant in the virtual world, which is sometimes referred to as an avatar, typically logically exists on the browser with links back to the server. The user sees via the user's monitor what the avatar sees in the virtual world, and the information regarding the user's avatar is sent back to the server so that the virtual world downloaded to each user can be updated with information about the location and movement of each user's avatar. In this way, each user is kept current with the state of each user's avatar via the user's browser. Also, any user activities which affect the virtual world from more than a local perspective are sent to the server.
Like with HTML-based websites, a need exists for screening users within a virtual world or permitting users of a virtual world with access only to permitted parts of a virtual world. However, as a user is a participant in a multi-user virtual world, existing two dimensional paradigms will not work. Accordingly, given the constraints involved with operating a virtual world over the Internet, a technique needs to be developed which invites participants to interact with elements within a virtual world which intuitively identifies interactive locations and which requires or permits registration and review of the participants in order to prevent unauthorized use, gain information about the participants, collect money from the participants, etc.